Monday, October 31, 2016

This summer I turned 40. This means that my life has become a model of solemnity and propriety.

So yes! This year we were the White Rabbit...

...and the Mad Hatter.

The genesis of this costume was this fascinator at Doramarra's shop on Etsy, which I've owned for a while but been stymied by. It's certainly evocative of the Mad Hatter, but it looks nothing like the hat the Mad Hatter wears, so I was afraid it wouldn't work as a costume. I'm glad we decided to try it, because this ended up being a lot of fun. I added a ribbon and the sign to the fascinator. I made the shirt and the corset, and even made spats. The ruffle on the shirt and decoration on the spats is one of those fabric ribbons with wire running through each edge, for wrapping fancy presents. The wire gave me control over the shape of the ruffles, which was great.

I found the leggings and the wig online, slapped on some sparkly makeup, and that was it. Kevin wore his own suit, carried one of my umbrellas, and got his hat/ears and pocket watch online. We made him a matching bowtie, painted his hair white using face paint (works much better and is much less disgusting than colored hair spray), and painted him a nose and whiskers. Done!

Thanks to Tim Correira for the photo booth, and LuQ and Irina (Mad Hatter #2 and Edward Scissorhands) for joining us!

Sunday, October 23, 2016

For those of you who read my blog posts via Twitter, sorry if I've been flooding you with old posts. The feed I used to use (Twitterfeed) is shutting down soon, so I've had to start a new feed (dlvr.it). I'm pretty sure it re-posted a lot of stuff right away. Apologies, too, if new posts tweet twice for a few days. I want to make sure the new feed is 100% working before I cancel the old feed.

So, I knitted someone a blanket last Christmas. It was my first ever non-washcloth knitting project and it was a massive undertaking, not to mention a great success.

And after I gave the blanket to its intended recipient... I missed it. :o)

So I decided to make a blanket for myself, slowly. I'm knitting 63 individual squares, each lined in black crochet. Here's where I am so far...

Most of the squares have a simple pattern of vanishing squares.

But some of the squares are specialer.

Since I don't expect you to be able to tell, that's a hummingbird.

That's a turtle,

that's an umbrella,

and that's a Dalek.

I'm honestly not sure how much I like it. It's sort of like a book; until I finish it -- like, really finish it -- I can't quite see what it is and am mildly suspicious that it's dreadful.

Which is of course no reason not to proceed.

After that? I am dying -- DYING -- to get the world's fattest wool and knit one of these blankets, possibly using my arms as my knitting needles. I have no idea how to do this or what it costs (I can't imagine that yarn is cheap), and I don't have time to research it at the moment. But hopefully one of these is in my future.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

At The Guardian, I love these gorgeous photos of the Parisian owners of indie shops standing in their own doorways. A chocolaterie, a patisserie, a pharmacie that makes me think of the TARDIS (sorry), a shop of homemade marionettes and toys, even a shop for pesticides and rodent traps (Destruction des Animaux Nuisibles). Photos taken by German photographer Sebastian Erras. Here at Snapshots: the shopfronts of independent Paris.

Friday, October 14, 2016

This is political and election-related, so I debated whether I was breaking my "Safe Zone" promise by posting it here. It's a speech First Lady Michelle Obama gave yesterday in Manchester, New Hampshire, so of course it refers to that horrible man. But: it also brings rightness back; it's uplifting and hopeful; it made me feel seen, heard, cared about, and understood as a woman and as a decent human being during this horrific election season. And -- she never says his name, for which I am grateful.

(The speech is actually only 21 minutes long. The first ten minutes is the stuff that is SO GOOD TO HEAR, the next ten minutes is stuff about Hillary, and the last ten minutes is FLOTUS shaking hands while her Secret Service detail anxiously hovers.)

Thursday, October 13, 2016

From October 2007 to June 2009, a Japanese spacecraft called Kaguya orbited the moon. Kaguya had cameras, and the cameras recorded, among other things, views of the Earth rising and setting over the moon.

Here's Earth setting over (or under?) the south pole of the moon! (BTW, if you get my posts as emails and the videos don't work, just click through to my Blog Actual.)

For more photos and videos (all breath-taking), check out "New Gems from the Moon" at the blog of the Planetary Society.

And, also in Paris, the Alexandra Sojfer collection. Alexandra's umbrellas are handmade in her in-house workshop, and they are SO ELEGANT. I know because I have one, and in fact, I may as well end this post with some pictures of a couple of my own umbrellas... randomly chosen, because they're the two I felt like photographing today.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

I promise, for the next month, to keep this blog a safe and comforting place. I don't know how often I'll be able to post, but when I do, I'll post fun and comforting things. If you want a place on the internets where you won't have to read about that person or be touched by his destructive toxicity, you can come here.

I probably won't post much political stuff at all, but just to start things off, here's a pantsuit flashmob in support of Hillary. Why? In the words of its creators,

Saturday, October 8, 2016

I haven't been blogging stuff about the election, because I have no interest in subjecting myself or you to any additional acknowledgment of the waste of humanity Republicans have chosen as their representative. He would fit perfectly into one of my books as one of my vile kings. And yet there he is, a chosen one. Because this is our country. I've built a little wall around my heart, to protect myself from the infection.

The trouble is that he gets in everywhere. That's one of his disgusting superpowers.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

It's October.... so we did Boda Borg! Without a doubt, one of my favorite monthly new things so far. Oh my gourd, it was fun.

What's Boda Borg? I'll explain best I can, but first, for those readers who know what it is and are worried that this post will contain clues or cheats, I promise it doesn't. It does contain some photos from inside the Boda Borg rooms, but I'm confident the photos are vague enough that they don't give much away that isn't already obvious.

BTW, Swedish Graceling cover -----> Because Boda Borg comes from Sweden! Follow that link for locations and other good stuff. Here in Boston, we're lucky to have the only stateside Boda Borg facility.

So, first I'm going to share the official definition of Boda Borg, then I'll describe what it's actually like. Officially: Boda Borg is a real-world gaming environment. Teams of 3-5 people move through a series of "Quests," tackling a variety of mental and physical challenges. Success in the first challenge means entry into the next challenge and so on… Failure in any challenge means starting over or selecting another Quest.

What it's actually like: You form a team of 3 to 5 friends. You enter the facility, which is a series of corridors full of doors. You choose a door, enter a room... and once you're in the room, you have to figure out how to successfully "win" in that room. There's a time limit; every room contains some sort of puzzle or challenge; and it's rarely clear what the puzzle or challenge is. So, it isn't just a matter of performing the challenge in the allotted time; it's a matter of figuring out what the challenge is to begin with. Stepping in the wrong place by accident because you haven't figured out what the challenge is yet could make you fail the room. For example, there are some rooms that have to be crossed without anyone ever touching the floor, so the moment you step into the room, you fail. You quickly learn to peek your head in and take a good look around before stepping in!

Meet my Quest team.

Kevin, Irina, me, LuQ!

If you do successfully win in a room, you pass through another door (or hatch, or hard-to-get-to opening) that leads to another room... where again, you have to figure out the challenge, then execute it, in the allotted time. At Boda Borg Boston, there are about 13 separate Quests, and each Quest contains 2 to 4 rooms. You're never inside any Quest for very long, because each room has a two-minute time limit.

The Quest doors in the corridor are green, red, or black. The green doors lead to mostly mental challenges; the red doors to a mix of mental and physical; and the black doors, to the most physical
challenges. Here are some pictures from inside the Quests, though I'm not going to identify which Quests they are, for those of you concerned about clues.

So pastoral.

Waiting for a low door to open so we can enter the next room in this Quest.

Easy.

Yup.

You need at least three people, in different positions at different times, to win most of the rooms. And there were a number of rooms I couldn't even have gotten through without the helping hands of Irina, LuQ, and Kevin. Over the course of about five hours, we tried almost all the Quests and successfully completed a few. But more often than not, we were met with the glowing red eye of failure…

Superbanan was my favorite Quest. We only managed to complete the first room, but it was SO satisfying!

What made it so fun? For starters, the joy of crawling, sliding, and climbing; the warm fuzzies of teamwork with friends; the satisfaction of successfully achieving things I was initially certain I couldn't achieve; the delight of how smart my friends are; that feeling of, "We can figure out how to do this."

My adorable team.

I recommend the all-day pass (so you can stay for as long as you want), and most especially, kneepads.

That was our new thing for October! And stay tuned, because November is going to be awesome.

Quick Links

"Then, at last, sitting on her stretcher-bed, she took from the very bottom of her pack an old peacock-blue scarf folded around a heavy, square book. She unwrapped it and opened it very carefully, as if guilty secrets might fall from between its pages like pressed flowers. This was Harry's secret. She was a writer."

-from The Tricksters, by Margaret Mahy

Writing is my secret. Every day I unwrap and open it as carefully as I can. Welcome to my blog about writing and life! Above you'll find quick links about me and my books, and below is more about me, ways to subscribe, and an archive of past posts. Click here to go home to my most recent posts.

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About the Author

Kristin Cashore wrote the New York Times bestsellers Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue, all of which have been named ALA Best Books for Young Adults. Her next book, Jane, Unlimited, comes out in September 2017. Graceling is the winner of the 2009 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature and Fire is the winner of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. The books are world travelers, currently scheduled to be published in thirty-four languages.

Finally, a note: This blog is my only online presence. I am not on Facebook, Google+, or any other social media sites, and I use Twitter solely as an amalgamation feed for my blog. Sorry, but I do not read @-replies on Twitter!